After Emily and I make our patio promise, she sends me off with her guitarist, Jimmy. He has nothing planned today and, despite his severe disdain for music journalists, has decided to let me do an interview. He takes me to a Polish steak house in the West End.
“They know me here,” he reassures. We sit at a small table, and the owner quietly locks the door, turning the sign to “CLOSED” for the public.
“Impressive,” I tell him. They know him, they know all his friends.
Sebastien, another punk guitarist, sits across from Jimmy, leaving the one empty chair across from me at the table for four. An invisible guest. They talk about vintage guitar pedals and sip whiskey while I rip my napkin into a billion shredded mosaic pieces. What was there to say? All I can do is repeat back key topics like “Clean Boost,” “Inspired by Zappa,” and “Flanger.” I didn’t know anything about clean boosts, but now I want one. I want a gadget or cable connected to my imaginary pedal to bring my guitar solo forward to the crowd. I nod emphatically when they assure me I don’t want a dirty boost.
“Sorry, Dave,” Jimmy offers. “We haven’t seen each other in a while, and this is our nerdy guitar world.”
“That’s okay, it’s interesting. I’ll take some notes.” I reply.
“He’s writing a piece for Emily about her and I,” Jimmy explains to Sebastien while a courteous male server clears their empty whiskey glasses, replacing them with new drinks, each with a twist of orange peel floating in amber. Piece for Emily, I scribble in the world’s most scared font, which races around the edges of my interview notebook.
I excuse myself and go to the bathroom, wandering through the empty steakhouse past powder-blue chairs and heavy curtains. Under the mocking breath of fluorescent lights, I stare at my reflection. I’m wearing PUMA gym shorts and a PUMA hoodie, looking like Eminem’s sober coach. I work at an athletics centre, and every adult male there dresses like a 19-year-old bodybuilder. I want to look more cerebral and intimidating. I want to glare the way anarchists glared at me when I accidentally stepped on a puppy at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair. I asked my friend once how I knew if I could pull off a leather jacket.
“If you have to ask…” she trailed off. It’s the attitude, the feeling. The leather jacket finds you, like a deck of tarot cards.
I wash my hands and head back to our own little Annual Meeting of the Guitar Nerds. The bathroom door swings closed behind me, and the paper towels and faucets rejoice in my exit, an end to my narcissist pantomime.
I return to the table, composed and breathing steadily, suspending my own disbelief that I don’t work a minimum-wage job and am 33 in real life. Jimmy has left the table, talking to the cooks, leaning on the counter. I am scared to sit with Sebastien alone, not sure what we will talk about. There’s a moment of glassed silence where I chew ice voraciously while Sebastien squints at his phone. We have nothing in common.
Luckily, Jimmy returns. He is trying to connect his phone to the wi-fi to play music, and pronounces it “wee fee” like Scandinavians do just to be obnoxious.
“What do you guys want to listen to?”
My blood freezes, brain racing through my paltry personal catalogue of music knowledge. Sebastien gestures to me as if to say your pick.
I survey the situation. We are eating, don’t be too upbeat. We are drinking, but don’t be celebratory because the weather outside is crap. Modest Mouse’s first album? Don’t be too obtuse. Leonard Cohen? That’s too predictable. Jefferson Airplane’s Bathing at Baxters? Too abstract for the white tablecloths.
“Put on Modest Mouse’s second album,” I blurt unconfidently.
His eyebrows raise, approving. Sebastien says nothing.
“Or not!” I scream. “Maybe not that!?”
“It’s fine…” Jimmy says, “Maybe you should start drinking again.”
The first sproing-y guitar notes enliven the steak house, turning the contrived elegance into a more raucous environment. Men could drink to this music, or men could talk to this music and not drink. It permits chaos but civility. I am cool now, we stare into our drinks talking about the new Toronto skyscrapers and how the city is turning into the Tokyo of North America. Do you remember Honest Ed’s? Do you remember when indie meant a xylophone and a ukulele? Do you remember being 15 years old and learning an e-minor chord on the guitar?
Jimmy already ordered for us, and the waiter brings over porcelain bowls of fluorescent purple borscht. We sip quietly. In a few minutes, we have tinted lips. I sip the earthy broth delicately. I sip the way octopuses solve puzzles. I let the nutrients enter the bloodstream under my tongue. Sebastien dabs a pierogi patiently into a pool of artisan sour cream. We talk about Canadian pop music, finally, an arena I can enter. I hold my beet-tinted spoon up to make my next point.
“To say Avril Lavigne’s music is bad is like saying murder is bad.” I declare.
Jimmy spits out his borscht onto the white tablecloth, and Sebastien claps his hands, and the two get red in the face, laughing hard. They are drunk. I am not drunk. Jimmy leans his hand on the table and coughs the rest of the remaining borscht driblets into the grey carpet. The waiter slips by and silently replaces their drinks. I hope Jimmy is paying. He must be paying.
To make men laugh uncontrollably is penultimate acceptance. You laughed at me, you like me, I made you lose supervision of your body and face for a minute. Now we can go to war together. I natter uncontrollably, scraping the spoon along the empty bowl, showing Sebastian that I can be effortless, too, as effortless as his vintage leather motorcycle jacket. I wonder if Jimmy is happy in his dating life. I wonder if Sebastien takes care of his teeth.
The dinner meanders aimlessly. I prop my feet on the chair beside me, sitting lengthwise and taking cute notes. I listen to them talk about insider music scene venue closures post-Covid and the opening of listening rooms. The Modest Mouse album, “The Lonesome Crowded West,” turns melancholy but hopeful, what experts call tragic optimism. This is an album for hungover showers and reheated french fries. This is an album for people who smoke at night.
Dave Cave is a student at Carleton University and a performance artist whose work has been produced at Toronto’s Canzine Festival of Independent Artists, Charlotte Street Arts Centre (Fredericton, NB), Peterborough Comedy Festival, and Peterborough Pride Festival.
